


Counting Round (And Round)

by Krasimer



Series: Without a Trace (This Was Done In Silence) [9]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Outlast (Video Games), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Albert Wesker Lives, Childhood Trauma, Consequences, Infected Characters, Infected Chris, Infected Chris Redfield, Insane Waylon Park, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Minor Chris Redfield/Albert Wesker, Mission Gone Wrong, Murkoff Corporation, Nanite Ghosts, Oops, Trauma, Umbrella Corporation, Unethical Experimentation, umbrella experiments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23310409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: Missions don't always go well.(There was a slash in his pant leg.Sticking gruesomely out of his skin was the needle that had been wielded against him, an oozy purple liquid inside of it. “Shit,” Waylon muttered touching the skin around it gently. Barry limped over to them, the Walrider following slowly behind.)
Relationships: Chris Redfield & Claire Redfield, Eddie Gluskin/Waylon Park, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Without a Trace (This Was Done In Silence) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/395359
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	1. Feel Your Bones A Shakin' (Temperature A Risin')

He was starting to be able to see them more.

Waylon took a deep breath, resting his chin on his palm. The quadruplets were dozing on the grass not too far away, watched over by him and Blake. The reporter was tapping away on a laptop that had been wired up by Waylon. Alnilam would perk their head up occasionally, keeping on eye on him as he watched them.

At the edges of the gathering, he could see the vague outlines of the nanite ghosts.

Chris Walker’s hulking form, Miles’ thinner and slighter shape. Eddie’s broad build was off to Waylon’s right, almost pressed against his knee. There was definite shape to them, now, a deeper shadow and a darker haze. Blake had mentioned, earlier, being able to see them out of the corners of his eyes. Not when he looked straight-on, but when he wasn’t looking for them.

“Here,” Chris Redfield’s voice startled him slightly, making him jump an inch or two. Alnilam, the most awake of the quadruplets, growled quietly until he shushed them. A mug of coffee was being offered forward at Waylon’s left, steaming gently.

“Thanks,” Waylon glanced over at Blake, who also had a mug next to his elbow. The reporter didn’t seem to have noticed.

“So Blake was telling me earlier that they’re starting to show up a little more?” Redfield sat down next to Waylon, glancing across the grass to where the other Chris was. He frowned, staring directly at him for a moment. “…I think I’m seeing them too.” He looked at Waylon, eyebrows raised.

Waylon nodded, sipping at the coffee. “Yeah. Try looking with your head towards me. Don’t look at them directly.”

Redfield turned towards him, pausing for a moment before his eyes went wide and he whipped back around. “What the fuck?” he blinked a couple of times, then turned back towards Waylon, taking a deep breath as he did. He settled into a crouch on the ground, very intently not-staring at the hazes of nanite ghosts. “Okay,” he said after a few minutes. “So that’s Chris Walker and Miles Upshur?”

“Yeah,” Waylon said again. “Eddie is on my right.”

Chris rearranged, settling into position again. After a moment, this time, he hummed and nodded. “Eddie is a lot clearer to see,” he met Waylon’s eyes. “Do you happen to know why?”

“He and I are closer,” Waylon curled a knee to his chest, resting the mug on it. He took a deep breath – it felt like the world was settling down again, calming after a storm. This was his life now. This was who he was, now. Waylon Park, programmer, escapee, survivor, experiment, on the run. “Eddie latched onto me, he’s the one who can switch out with me and take over to get us all to safety. He’s done that a couple of times.”

“I met you when it was happening,” Chris recalled.

“You did,” Waylon nodded. “I don’t know why, but he’s the one I’m most connected to.”

He could see Eddie’s head turning towards him. He smiled at the man.

“The quadruplets can see them as well,” Waylon added on after a moment of silence. “Without having to do the corner-of-their-sight thing. I think it’s a bit like compatible software and hardware – they’re from similar experiments. I was never actually meant to be here. I wasn’t supposed to be the Walrider’s host, I wasn’t supposed to be their experiment. I interrupted. I stepped in because I blew a whistle and that carried consequences.” He took another sip of coffee, closing his eyes as the heat traveled down his throat. “I’m not a compatible piece of hardware but the software has updates and I’m becoming compatible.”

“That’s not usually how computers work,” Chris snorted. “But I think I get what you mean.”

He dropped onto the ground, leaning back on his hands. Waylon watched as he rearranged himself, Chris’s brow furrowed as he picked at the toe of his boot. The other man had something he wanted to say, Waylon realized. He was trying to figure out how to say it, how to put it into words.

Somewhere along the line, Eddie’s vocabulary had slipped into his.

He was picking up mannerisms from all three of them, his own bleeding into the Walrider. The way he pushed up the bridge of his glasses, how he sometimes shoved his hair behind his ear. He could see the Walrider doing the same things, occasionally fiddling with it’s hands. He had a living shadow and he had three ghosts following along. 

“We have a mission coming up,” Chris spoke up again, the air going still around them. “I was wondering if you’d come along.”

“When?”

“Three days from now,” Chris looked at him, glancing without turning his head. He’d been so worried the last couple of days – his sister was off on her own for right now, the same fight he was entrenched in. The determined expression on his face was enough to tell Waylon that the man was ready to start a brawl. The BSAA had been impressed with the low mortality rate of his attacks, but Chris would throw himself in fist-first. He didn’t kill but he did use his entire body as a melee weapon. “If you’d come along, that would be a bit of a relief.”

“Small team?” Waylon took another sip of his coffee, glancing over as Castor and Polaris rearranged themselves. The four of them were leagues beyond what they were like when he’d found them. They still didn’t speak but he could approach with just a little bit of warning and they wouldn’t immediately be on their guard. “I’d be leaving the quadruplets and Blake here.”

Blake shot a glance at them, an eyebrow raised.

Under guidance from Waylon, passing along Walker’s lessons, Blake had started learning how to fight. He’d just been a reporter, before, relying on knowledge and intelligence to get himself to safety. The things he had been through had changed that. After Waylon had pulled him out, everything had changed.

They all had.

Eddie stayed closer, these days. New people and new experiences and things Waylon had never thought he’d get involved with. Chris and Miles were hovering around the four, guarding them. Alnilam was recovering nicely from whatever had been done to them. Altair stayed close to his sibling at all times, the other half of his set. From the raids on defunct Umbrella headquarters around the world, the BSAA had found more and more information on the Constellations project. They had been designed to do the sort of missions Chris was going on, though they had also been more in the direction of the Walrider. Sneak in, gather intel, sneak out again. Kill if they had to, sometimes that would have been the mission.

They had been designed as assassins.

Four children, taken from a young mother, altered and tweaked until they were something else entirely. Assassins and spies and mercenaries. Altair had functioned as Umbrella’s mercenary. The other three had shown too much personality to be used in such a way. Too hesitant, too emotional, too unwilling to follow orders. The project had been shelved due to complications.

For the seven months they had spent with the BSAA, they had found out a lot.

Chris nodded, looking out of the corner of his eye at the siblings, his focus drawn to the other Chris. “They seem like they’ll be well taken care of. Between the nanite ghosts and Blake, they’ll be safe here. The BSAA will protect them,” he shrugged. “My sister should be back to base soon as well. I’ll tell her to look out for them until we get back.”

“I’ll go,” Waylon sighed. “I want both companies gone. Murkoff for what they did to the people I know, Umbrella for what they’ve done to the world. I can’t quite believe how far behind I’ve gotten in social awareness – I hadn’t realized what Umbrella has done.”

“You’ve been on the run for years, Waylon,” Chris snorted. “Of course you weren’t aware. You were fighting to stay alive.”

“Yeah, but you’d think I’d have at least _heard—”_

“Waylon,” Chris reached out and patted his shoulder, seemingly unaware of the way Eddie tensed up at the contact. “You’ve been running for your goddamn life and doing what you can. I don’t think anyone blames you for any of that. I mean, Murkoff and Umbrella might, but they’re not really my concern at the moment.”

“They’re always my concern,” Waylon felt something like the first touch of winter frost run down his spine. “I’ve lost so many people to what they’ve done.” He fiddled with his wedding ring, worn on a leather strip necklace these days.

There were so many more than just him that had been given no justice.

X

The mission had gone wrong almost from the start.

That was all Waylon could think as he coughed, waving some sort of smoke and smog away from his face.

“Chris, watch out!”

Waylon turned on his heel, lunging towards the BSAA members as the air around them seemed to shudder and roll, the lab they were in starting to come apart at the seams. Barry was backed into a corner, firing into a monstrosity clinging to the ceiling above him. Every few bullets seemed to trigger a sharp tail, slicing towards him. Each time he ducked brought the misses narrower and narrower, a few scratches on his arms bleeding sluggishly.

Chris was being attacked by someone in a lab coat, a two-foot-long blade in one hand, the other holding something that glimmered in the light.

Waylon felt his chest go tight, the Walrider flickering into view at his side before it flew on ahead, slamming into the lab-coated person and knocking them sideways. “Chris,” he hissed out the name, stuttering to a halt as he dropped to the floor. “Chris, wake up, come on,” he grabbed the man’s hand, clenching it tightly.

There was a slash in his pant leg.

Sticking gruesomely out of his skin was the needle that had been wielded against him, an oozy purple liquid inside of it. “Shit,” Waylon muttered touching the skin around it gently. Barry limped over to them, the Walrider following slowly behind.

“Fuck,” Barry crouched down, his cheek bleeding. “Hey, Chris, look at me,” he reached out, slapping gently at his friend’s face.

Chris’s eyes opened slowly, his chest heaving as he seemed to wake up some more. His skin was scalding against Waylon’s, sweat dripping down his forehead. It had only been a few moments, a minute at most, since the needle had gone into his skin and the virus had been injected. “Hey…” he choked the word out, sweat beginning to soak through his shirt. He glanced up, his reactions delayed, as the Walrider curled a little closer, leaning over his head. It looked down at him with the empty sockets that suggested eyes, fingers tapping gently on the ground.

“We have got to get out of here,” Barry muttered, taking Chris’s other hand. “C’mon Chris, get up, you’ve got to.”

Beside him, Waylon could sense the others arriving. Chris Walker was the first to make it to him. ‘ _An undiluted injection,’_ the man’s voice whispered to him. Waylon could feel his blood running cold at those words, the Walrider letting out a panicked noise above him.

“He’s going to die if we can’t find something to combat that,” Waylon reached out, putting his hand on Barry’s wrist. “That was an undiluted variation of a virus – it’ll burn through his body in a short time, rip apart his immune system. Whatever variation they were testing here, it’ll do horrible things to him before he dies. He’ll die in pain,” he looked around, sending up a silent prayer to a god he hadn’t believed in for decades. “Shit,” he muttered again, shaking his head.

Above their heads an alarm started blaring. A short pause followed, a speaker crackling to life and informing them that a self-destruct sequence had begun.

“Pick him up,” Waylon stood, looking around again. There had to be something.

There was always something.

Barry hefted Chris to his feet, the man dangling limply from his friend’s shoulder. The Walrider roared as it passed them, a howl that could chill blood echoing through the facility. Waylon felt that same anger spiking in him, a frightened beast in his gut. Eddie’s hand was on his back, pushing him forward, pushing him to keep up with Barry as he dragged Chris from the room. “We need to get out of here,” Waylon continued looking for something, anything, that would help them. There wasn’t much to see, not much to find.

Nodding, Barry put his head down and doubled his efforts to get Chris to the door, seeming to block out the world as he moved.

Up ahead was a glass tube, connected to various computers and machines. There were readouts printing next to it, the murky liquid hard to see through from a side angle. As they came up closer to it, however, Waylon could see inside of it clearly – some sort of privacy protector like office computers occasionally had.

Inside the tube was a man.

His hair was light, an almost white-blond, and his eyes were closed. There was a mask on his face, connected to an apparatus that ran up and out of the tube. At the edges of his face, there were burn marks, scarring in odd patches.

Waylon couldn’t help himself.

He stopped to stare, the Walrider stopping with him. Barry came to a halt just in time to not run into them, huffing and panting. The damage so far seemed to have stopped in the below levels, but they didn’t want to test it – self-destruct was still active. He couldn’t stop himself from looking, though. There was something about the man, something about him being locked into a tube filled with an eerily green liquid. “That,” Barry looked up at the man, horrified recognition flashing across his face.

Chris, hanging off his shoulder, his legs useless beneath him. His head was lolling to the side, his eyes unfocused.

Even from a few feet away, Waylon could feel the heat coming off of him. They needed to get him to safety, maybe try to find an antidote to whatever virus had been injected directly into his system at full strength. If a patient was getting dosed with a virus to try and combat the one they already had, it was always diluted before being injected.

He had been hit with a full-strength dose of whatever the fuck it was.

“Are you kidding me,” Barry muttered. He was still looking up at the man in the tube, taking several deep breaths before shaking his head. “That…That can’t be him. It can’t be.”

“Barry?”

Barry turned to look at him, a haunted expression on his face, swallowing hard. “That looks like Albert Wesker. A man Chris watched die – he reported back to us about it. He was supposed to have died back in two-thousand-and-nine,” he shook his head. “Chris watched him. He dropped him into a volcano – Wesker took a fucking explosion to the face and got dropped into a volcano and now he’s _here?_ ” He looked down when Chris twitched, his back cracking and snapping as he hit the ground, having slipped out of Barry’s grasp.

He shuddered and twitched relentlessly, his hands clawing at the ground. Choked vocalizations came from him, words that guttered out before they could be heard.

Waylon dropped down next to him, a hand on his shoulder as he tried to figure out what to do. Chris’s eyes closed, his head jerking to one side like he was trying to shrug something off. Blood was welling up in the beds of his nails. He looked ready to fall over. Waylon hesitated, looking up at Barry. The other man had dropped to his knees on Chris’s other side, his eyes wide. His hands were clenched on the floor, like he was just as confused as Waylon.

“Chris,” Barry bit his bottom lip. “Chris, c’mon.”

Chris didn’t answer.

Waylon felt a shiver run down his spine, the tell-tale sign of one of the nanite ghosts. Miles’ voice echoed in his head. ‘ _Look at the man in the tube,’_ Miles whispered. ‘ _Pay attention to him.’_

Looking up, Waylon stopped breathing.

The man had orange eyes, bleary but focused, as he stared down at the three of them. He lifted a hand through the liquid, placing it against the glass. Waylon stood up and watched, barely aware of Barry and Chris anymore. The man tilted his head, looking down at them, blinking a couple of times. Each movement was slow. Stilted. His eyes, bright orange, almost glowing, seemed to stare into Waylon.

“You said his name was Albert Wesker?” Waylon asked, taking a step back.

“Yeah,” Barry wasn’t looking up, too focused on trying to get Chris up and moving again. Waylon looked down at them, crouching and pressing two fingers to the ground to help his balance. “Wesker was our captain, way the fuck back. We worked for Umbrella, remember? S.T.A.R.S. He was our captain. He betrayed us all, threatened my family.”

“Cool, cool, alright,” Waylon hummed, his ears perking like he’d heard something he wasn’t aware of just yet. It happened again, but this time he actually consciously heard it.

The sound of cracking glass slipped through the air.

Gulping, Waylon spun on his toes, curled an arm around Chris’s waist, then threw them both across the ground. “Barry!” he snarled the man’s name out as he moved, hearing the glass shatter and liquid splash out across the floor. “Barry!”

“I’m alright!” Barry was several feet away, eyes wide as he unholstered his gun.

Albert Wesker, supposedly, was crouched on the ground and pulling the mask off of his face. The scarring around his face continued across his back and shoulders, going tight when he moved. He had a pair of skin-tight shorts on, was otherwise nude.

Eddie’s presence at his side was sudden and protective, like a shield in front of him.

Wesker’s eyes tracked Eddie’s movements and Waylon leaned a little closer to him, fear trickling down his spine. “Uh,” he took a deep breath. Eddie leaned closer as well, his warmth washing over Waylon slowly. With a soft growl, Wesker took a shuffling movement forward, his hands less-than-steady on the floor as he moved. He seemed to gain strength as he moved, however, his limbs coming back under his control. “Barry?”

Barry’s gun clicked.

Out of ammo.

The other man met Waylon’s eyes for a second before both of them looked back at Wesker. The orange-eyed creature dragged himself across the floor, his breathing harsh.

“Back off,” Barry put himself between Wesker and Chris. His eyes were dark, anger carved into his expression. It was a deep sort of anger, the kind that came from being angry for over a decade. Barry and Chris had mentioned working for Umbrella before, that much was true. They had stopped in 1998, with the disbanding of S.T.A.R.S.

Wesker reached out with one hand and pushed Barry aside, throwing him a few feet.

He brought himself up onto his knees, staring down at Chris. His eyes were clear now, no longer bleary. There was a heavier line of scarring down his back, like someone had dug for his spine with a knife. He leaned down, not even bothering to look at Barry when the man tried to come closer again. Wesker reached out and pushed him back. “Unstable,” Wesker muttered. “Too strong of a dose.”

“I—” Barry blinked a couple of times, frowning. “What?”

“He was injected with a pure version of a virus,” Waylon stepped forward, Wesker’s gaze snapping towards him. “Directly into his bloodstream. I think he might be dying.”

“Yes.” Wesker nodded.

“Do you know how to help him?” Waylon continued, swallowing his nerves. He’d been living this sort of life for so long that it surprised him. Fear in this situation was a normal reaction for anyone who hadn’t lived through what he’d lived through. There was no room for fear. “If he’s dying, I would like him to survive.”

Wesker nodded again, brushing his fingers over Chris’s cheek. “Redfield,” he muttered. “Christopher,” he chuckled, the noise off-note. Dissonant. “Best shot of S.T.A.R.S, messy temper,” He ran a hand up Chris’s chest, his thumb settling over the man’s pulse. “Infected.”

“…Infected?” Barry got to his feet, looking down at Wesker. “What do you mean?”

“Similar virus,” Wesker didn’t look at either of them. He seemed to only have eyes for Chris. “To me.”

Waylon watched as Barry’s face went a dead-looking pale, his hands clenching into useless fists at his sides. “Barry?” He reached out, hesitating before putting his hand on the man’s shoulder. Barry didn’t even look at him, too focused on looking down at Chris. The younger of the two, Waylon had been told, old friends. They had survived through hell and back together, along with a couple of others Waylon hadn’t met yet. Starting in 1998, they had been through more than most. “Barry, we need to keep going. We can do what we can for him, but we need to get out.”

Wesker stared at Waylon, eyes narrowed, his head tilted to one side. He was tracking Waylon’s movements, the steady and heavy gaze of a predator.

Raising his chin, Waylon met his eyes and felt Eddie pressing up against his side. The Walrider hissed, circling around all of them. Miles and Chris – that was still hard to figure out how to label them separately – were off behind him. “You’re coming with us,” Waylon tilted his head down, dropping into a crouch. On the same level as Wesker, he could tell the man would be nearly a head taller than him when standing. He was broad in the shoulders, stronger than his frame gave the impression of being.

“And if I refuse?”

“I’m pretty sure Umbrella would love to recoup their losses here,” Waylon refused to look away. Eddie’s anxiety buzzed in his head, the nanite ghost’s hand running up the back of his neck. “And you were just in a tube in their lab. You were supposed to have died a while ago, I’ve heard. No resources, no clothes other than a pair of shorts, no way out. I’m going to guess you don’t know the layout of this facility.”

Wesker’s lip pulled back on a snarl, his eyes narrowing. “Fine.” He bit the word out, the sound of it coming out chewed up.

Barry leaned down to pull Chris off the floor, arranging the man’s arm limply around his neck. Wesker stood on shaking legs, his eyes now following every movement that Barry made. Chris held his attention.

From what little Waylon had heard, they had always been drawn to each other. Chris Redfield and Albert Wesker had come across each other so many times – fighting across the years. That was all the story that he’d ever heard. Chris didn’t want to talk about him often. Waylon couldn’t blame the man – they’d only known each other for about seven months. They’d seen a New Years and a couple of other holidays pass by while working together. According to what he knew, Albert Wesker had supposedly been dead for almost eight years.

With a soft cough, Barry caught his attention, jerking his head. It was a small motion, but Waylon nodded and moved forward, catching up and walking on Chris’s vulnerable side.

A quiet growl came from Wesker with the movement, but he allowed it to happen.

Waylon could feel his ghosts walking around him, the Walrider floating overhead. Miles was at his back, standing as a guard. Walker was off on Barry’s other side, a wall of defense for the two men. Eddie was at Waylon’s left, the brush of his hand a static sort of crackle against his skin. “Why are there four people with you?” Wesker’s voice was dry, his eyes bright as the lights flickered. The Walrider hissed, plunging through the wall to cause chaos somewhere else in the facility.

“Because I went through hell and I wasn’t going to leave them there,” Waylon looked at him.

He’d been right.

Wesker was just about a head taller than him. He was muscular, broad at the shoulders, and he moved like he was hunting something small and terrified. Waylon refused to be the prey, refused to be intimidated by the creature walking beside them.

Eddie’s gaze was heavy, directed past Waylon’s shoulder to land on Wesker’s face.

“I’m not the fallout of Umbrella’s bullshit,” Waylon continued. “I’m the fallout of what happened to Murkoff. Chris Walker, Miles Upshur, Eddie Gluskin.” He pointed at each of them. “The Walrider.” He gestured upwards, to where it had last been seen. “I went through hell by sending Miles’ invitation and then I got him killed. Eddie died in front of me. Chris tried to help contain the problem but he was inside and they had been experimenting on him. It got him killed.”

“Murkoff.” Wesker inhaled slowly, his eyes closing for a moment. “Sister corporation.” When he opened his eyes again, something flickered in them. If he’d been asked, Waylon would have sworn he’d seen fear.

Nobody challenged them on their way out, the Walrider rejoining them as they exited the building. The air stank of chemicals and gas and Waylon almost laughed as something deep within the building exploded, fire flaring out the windows. “I’ve made it my mission to take them down,” Waylon told Wesker, meeting his eyes with his chin held high. “Too many people have died at their hands.”

Something like respect grew in Wesker’s eyes as he stared at Waylon.

Another reminder about the self-destruct came over the speaker above them and Wesker sent a quiet sneer up towards the ceiling. With every step, every moment passing, his walking was more confident, his strides stronger. When they came across a small lab, Wesker ducked through the door, shuffling through the jars and vials with steady hands. Waylon followed after him, frowning. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

He got a glare in return, a hard, flat stare.

“Seriously,” Waylon grinned, feeling Miles’ strain of feral anger making itself known. He grinned, imagining himself with sharp teeth. It was beginning to feel truer, these days. He felt dangerous, dancing on an edge. The Walrider curled around his shoulder, leering over him and menacing Wesker. “Do you know what you’re doing? Because if you don’t or if you want to hurt Redfield, we’re going to have a problem.”

“I have a PhD in Virology,” Wesker continued moving, looking away from Waylon to do so. “I was a head researcher for Umbrella.”

“So you know exactly what you’re doing,” Waylon leaned his weight on his hands, on the edge of the table. “If you hurt him…” he let the sentence trail off, a quiet threat in his tone. It was always funnier to see what people pulled out of tones and words, what meaning they derived. He paused, pulling himself back together. That had felt like Walker’s pessimism, the former military officer standing guard at Waylon’s back. Eddie was still at his right side, keeping him upright.

“I do,” Wesker continued working, held a vial up to the light. “Not the proper workspace, not the proper tools, but it will do for now.”

He turned on his heel, grabbing a syringe and needle as he moved.

Filling the syringe, he plunged it into Redfield’s arm before Barry could even react, pressing the plunger down and sending the bright green liquid into his bloodstream. Redfield jerked and twitched, whining quietly, but he quieted down quickly. “We need to keep moving,” Wesker motioned for Barry to lead the way, stepping back. “The facility will be imploding soon.”

“What, they would destroy everything like that?” Waylon moved past him, feeling the Walrider taking off again.

“To keep their research in their own hands, to keep everything contained, to keep their secrets?” Wesker reached out, snagging a coat off a rack as he passed it. “Of course they would.” He adjusted the coat on his shoulders, frowning at the way it fit across his shoulders. His eyes were visibly in the gloom as the power went out, emergency lights kicking in.

They kept moving.


	2. Burns A Hole Right Through Your Soul

Reality was an ever-shifting thing.

Wesker tracked the static shapes, the movements of the echoes. He could tell they were there, but he could not completely see them. He could see the edges of them, the places where they were the heaviest. They smelled like a sort of a threat, like the feeling at the back of your throat when you were going to throw up. Doing his best to keep his reaction contained, Wesker looked at the cargo Burton was carrying, watching as Christopher dragged along at his side.

The man had found him again.

Again and again and again, Christopher had found him. Had been the one to face him – they were entwined. Their destinies lay together, stubbornly dragging them back to one another. It had been almost a decade, if his internal clock was to be believed.

Eight years since Christopher thought he had finally been rid of Wesker.

As they got outside, Wesker closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the shift of the bottles of viral components he had grabbed. His pocket was full of things that would help Christopher survive the changing of his entire self. If he were to live, to thrive, the items in Wesker’s pocket would ensure his health. He would not be some failed experiment, scrapped altogether and tossed into a bin. Wesker would ensure his survival, his health.

Nothing else mattered anymore.

Christopher was all he could focus on, really. He should have known, should have _seen_ – their fates had been spiraling towards this outcome from the moment Wesker had taken Christopher onto his team.

Behind them, the building creaked and groaned, the stunning amount of glass shattering. True to what he had told the man who had entered with Burton, Umbrella would not let such a building remain standing. Self-destruction would be the only way forward, to keep their secrets and their research. A small smile turned up the corner of Wesker’s lips, a choked-off chuckle rumbling in his chest for a moment.

And here he stood.

A monument to the failures of Umbrella. Their greatest triumph and their biggest defeat. An escaped research project, pulled from the molten lava and brought back alive. A fluke, he had been told.

“Put him down,” Wesker spoke up a smoke filled the sky, gesturing towards the ground. “He needs to be stabilized before he goes into cardiac arrest.” He crouched next to Christopher, taking a deep breath to inhale the scent he had not had access to for eight years. There was something about the man, something entrancing. Almost a siren song to Wesker, as he always had been. He let his hand stroke slowly across Christopher’s cheek, flicking the back of his finger against his cheekbone. There was almost no reflexive reaction, almost no sign of life, but he saw and felt the subtle twitch that followed.

Good enough.

Drawing on all of the medical knowledge he possessed, Wesker got to work. Christopher’s heart was pounding in his chest, as if it were trying to escape, and he knew he needed to bring it to a calmer state. Working quickly, Wesker blocked out the voices of the others.

The air filled with smoke and ash as the building burned behind them.

Wesker paused, swiping sweat off of his brow as he looked up. “No chance at synthesizing what I need…” he muttered. “Virus is similar to what I already have…”

He spotted the knife on the smaller man’s hip, swiping it off of him before he could say anything in protest. The viral strains were close enough – it was something of a desperate gamble, but it was the only chance Christopher would have. A quiet voice in the back of his mind spoke up, traitorous, as it reminded Wesker that he would no longer be the only one of his kind if it worked. He slashed a line down Christopher’s arm then cut across his own palm. Before Burton could so much as shout, Wesker had their blood mixing.

His fingers dug into Christopher’s skin, the darker tone of it turning ashy as the virus ran rampant through his system.

Off in the distance, sirens began blaring. Emergency services had been alerted.

The smaller man stood up, worrying at his lip, tucking his knife back into the sheath he wore. “C’mon,” he muttered, opening up the door of the car they had brought with them. “Wesker, get into the back seat.”

“I need to continue contact until I am certain this is working.”

“Cool, great, fine,” he gestured again. “Into the _fucking car._ Carry him. I know you’re strong enough.” He came closer, picking up Christopher’s legs. Wesker tamped down on the instinct to lash out at the man, to curl over Christopher protectively and make the others back away.

They were of the same species, just about. The only ones of their kind. Christopher was the only one, in Wesker’s entire life, that he considered worthy of such a thing.

Following the man’s words, Wesker kept his grasp on Christopher’s arm, gathering the man to his chest. In spite of himself, Wesker felt a calm washing over him as he noted that the fever burning through Christopher was already subsiding. The small gambit he had played was working – a synthesized virus already present in his blood was overriding the invasive one. Christopher would, with any luck, survive. The one he had been injected with was an unfinished variation at full strength. The virus in Wesker’s blood would act as both antidote and vaccine – with the side-effect of changing Christopher into the same state as Wesker.

Burton sat in the passenger seat, turning to watch Wesker with horror in his eyes.

He had always been a good man.

Not worthy of the changes Wesker had gone through, but a good man. A too-large heart and too much compassion to survive without luck and friends. His friendship with Christopher appeared to have survived the years, if his horror was anything to go by.

“Staring will not help him,” Wesker spoke up. Burton’s eyes narrowed.

Ah, yes. His bravery had come out intact as well.

The small man drove them away at a respectable speed, taking them down a narrow path off the main road. “If the two of you start fighting,” he muttered. “I am going to kick you both out of the car.” He glanced back in the mirror as a crackle of static made Wesker wince, still holding Christopher’s arm. One of the nanite projections, then. Given the reaction of the man, the way he nodded, they were speaking with him.

Outside of the car, Wesker could see the Walrider darting along.

X

The lights were too bright.

Chris groaned, raising an arm to cover his eyes. At least, he tried to. His arm felt heavy and leaden, too much to even consider moving at the moment. His eyes felt like stones, the weight of his head too much as well. Nothing could move him, nothing could convince him to so much as twitch. Fuck consciousness, he was just going to drop back asleep again.

“Oh, good,” Waylon’s voice was as sarcastic as ever. “You’re rejoining us in the land of the living.”

“Fuck off, Park,” Chris could tell his voice sounded off, his throat sore.

A laugh followed his words, Waylon’s on-the-edge amusement. Chris had gotten used to which sounds were what, over the months. That was the sound of Waylon Park feeling like he was about to lose his goddamn mind. “The fuck’s up,” he muttered, managing to find enough strength to turn his head to the side.

There, in front of him, was another reason his arm hadn’t moved.

Before he even saw who it was attached to, Chris knew that hand. Albert Wesker had always had unfairly pretty hands for a man, long fingers that always seemed to know exactly what they were doing. “I…” Chris choked on his spit, feeling a frantic panic rise up in his chest. “What is he—”

“He just saved your life,” Waylon sighed. “We found him in a glass tube.”

“How do you mean he saved my life?” Chris jolted up, his arm still in the iron grip of Wesker. The man was apparently unconscious. “What—”

“You got injected with an undiluted strain of a virus,” Barry’s voice came from the other side of the room. Even Blake was there, sitting next to Barry with a look of concentration on his face. “One of the scientists. Do you remember that?” he looked uncomfortable, his hands clenching and unclenching. Chris didn’t see his gun on his hip, which meant that Barry had taken it off because he felt like it was a bad idea for him to have it right then. If he had felt in his right mind, he would have been disassembling and assembling it again and again. “I couldn’t move fast enough to get to you in time before he got the needle into your leg.”

“If Wesker hadn’t meddled,” Waylon perched on the edge of the table next to the bed Chris was in. “You would be dead. A completely undiluted dose of the virus meant your body was burning itself up in…Well, seconds. I was going to say minutes but that’s not even right. You were out in seconds.”

Chris looked down at where Wesker’s hand was still gripping his arm, even as the man slept. “He’s asleep?”

“I imagine spending eight years in a goddamn tube makes him a little weaker,” Barry grumbled. “Not much, mind you, but enough that he’s tired. He’s grabbing you because he basically gave you a mini transfusion on the way here. Every time we tried to insist he get on his own bed and sleep like that, he looked like he wanted to kill one of us. Maybe all of us.”

Rubbing at his face, Barry groaned. “I thought you said he was dead, Chris.”

“I could have sworn he was,” Chris shook his head. “He _looked_ dead. The last time I saw him, he was sinking into the goddamn lava. Barry, he took a fucking RPG to the face. Either he can regenerate from injuries like that or he had some help.”

“Fuck.” Barry kept his eyes trained on Wesker.

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Chris groaned, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand. He flopped back down on the bed, throwing his arm over his face. His right arm remained trapped in Wesker’s hold.

There was a whispering voice in the back of his mind that said he was where he was supposed to be.

It worried him.

Depending on what was causing that thought…

Either way, no matter which way he looked at it, he wasn’t fit for duty. Not when his instincts were screaming to stay close to Wesker. “He gave me a transfusion?” he peered at Waylon from under his arm, watching the smaller man shift uncomfortably. He had to know, had to ask. If he was infected with the same thing as Wesker, he was one of the only members of what was technically a new species. The idea was unsettling, a shiver dragging down his spine.

At the same time, making his stomach churn, he felt comforted by the thought.

There was no way in hell he was going to be trustworthy enough to go on missions for the foreseeable future. Not when his instincts were dragging him towards Wesker. The crush he’d had on the man in the nineties had been bad enough, back when he hadn’t been known as a traitor and the enemy. Chris had spent so many nights picturing the older man’s hands, wondering what they would feel like on his skin. And now that he knew, the faint attraction he still felt was boiling up again.

Oh fuck, he was a _mess._

He had always known he was not the most stable person, but this just proved it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obsession and Love are similar things for these two. 
> 
> Hey y'all. I'm back. It has been an insane year. I hope there are still some people reading this series.


	3. Digging In Deep

Waylon kept watch over Chris.

It was the least he could do—he hadn’t managed to intervene to keep the man safe, so he would watch over him. Wesker was still curled up next to the bed, his hand still clenched around Chris’s in his sleep. Like a predator keeping their pack safe. Waylon knew, somehow, that he would know when the man woke up. Even if Wesker pretended he wasn’t awake, Waylon would know. Umbrella and Murkoff had been trying to conquer the same perceived problem from different angles and directions – what had been done to Waylon was similar enough to what had been done to Wesker, he supposed.

Chris had fallen back asleep at some point, his head turned towards Wesker. What was it like, suddenly being something that was technically a different species?

Being something different than what you once were, than how you were born?

Waylon turned his head slightly when the door creaked open slowly, watching as one of the quadruplets walked in. They were walking even slower, a prey animal sizing up a predator. Whichever one it was eyed Wesker apprehensively, moving closer to Waylon as they did.

‘ _He was there,’_ came the gentle intrusion of their voice. From the tone of it, the lightness of the voice, Waylon knew it was Alnilam. The sound of their telepathy had changed, recently. Like they had all switched frequencies to be on the same one as the nanite ghosts. ‘ _When they had us. When they stared and changed and ruined.’_ Alnilam’s head tilted to one side, their long hair curled in their hands as they crept closer. Their chin came to rest against Waylon’s knee, their entire body shaking.

“Is it okay if he’s here?” Waylon asked, keeping his voice down.

‘ _He can stay.’_

“Are you sure? We could transfer him to another safe house. We don’t need to keep him here.”

 _‘He would take Chris with him,’_ Alnilam looked up at Waylon, eyes dark. ‘ _We don’t want to lose him.’_

Waylon nodded, petting his hand down the back of their head a couple of times. The BSAA had been trying to coax functional people out of the quadruplets, give them back whatever identities they might have once had. Altair and Alnilam were the best-functioning pair of assassins that had been produced – they were so in each other’s heads that they sometimes forgot which body was their own.

They were so far into each other’s heads that they forgot they were not one person.

Two halves of a whole, sewn together and forced to heal closed.

Alnilam relaxed against his side, their hands still curled up in their hair. Despite everything, the four of them still looked so much more like people, these days. There was a world of difference between the four that Waylon had originally found and the four that stayed with them now.

‘ _He’s waking up,’_ Altair’s voice came suddenly, the door closing softly as he entered the room.

“Which one?”

Altair’s eyes flashed as he stood beside his sibling and curled his hands into fists. He narrowed his eyes as he stared at the bed, his head tilting in the same way Alnilam’s had. ‘ _Albert Wesker,’_ his voice was harder this time, angrier. He stayed next to his sibling, however, despite the fact that it seemed like he wanted to lunge forward and attack the man.

Waylon knew, before Altair answered, which one it was. He turned back to face the two men, staring at Wesker.

Wesker’s head lifted slowly, the man blinking a couple of times as he sat up.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Waylon grinned. “I don’t think we got introduced while running out of there – I’m Waylon Park. These two,” he gestured at Alnilam and Altair, then dropped his hand back onto Alnilam’s head. “Are a project Umbrella had to abandon because they escaped. From what I recall, that would have been around the time you ‘died’, so that’s a fun set of facts to have.”

“…There is supposed to be four,” Wesker sat up a little further, narrowing his eyes as he grimaced. He rolled his shoulder, still clutching at Chris’s hand. “Why aren’t there four?”

“There are,” Waylon shrugged. “The other two are probably checking on Barry and the Walrider. It tends to spend time with them, keep them company when we’re not needed on missions. Barry keeps an eye on all four of them – they’re the same age as his youngest daughter.” He paused, watching Wesker. “You remember her, right? You threatened to have her killed, so you should remember her.” He grinned when Wesker looked at him again. “Just pointing that out. I’m glad you saved his life, thanks for that,” he jerked his chin towards Chris, hugging Alnilam a little closer when they squeaked and squished into his side. “But you apparently did something to them.”

“They were a brand new project back in the nineties,” Wesker held his head up high, giving off the air of someone used to reporting in for just a moment. By the time of the Spencer mansion mission, they were only three years old.”

“So…What? You were a researcher with Umbrella, I know that much.”

“I was one of their greatest triumphs,” Wesker smirked, his orange eyes flashing. Altair hissed at him, his nails sharp as he took a step forward. Alnilam grabbed their brother, holding him back. “One of their greatest creations.”

Waylon frowned. “So you were a project as well, even before?”

“Yes.”

Alnilam pushed away from Waylon and he let them go. They took a couple of steps on trembling legs and dropped into a crouch next to the chair Wesker was sitting in. When he looked down at them, Alnilam reached up and traced a hand down his arm. The nanites in Waylon’s system reacted to that, vibrating at the edges as he tried to keep himself calm. ‘ _They altered you further,’_ their voice came back again. ‘ _Like us._ ’

“Yes,” Wesker let out a huff of air, looking down at Alnilam with an oddly blank expression. “They brought me back from the brink of death and turned me into something resembling a god,” he chuckled.

‘ _No, they didn’t,’_ Alnilam shook their head. ‘ _They made you afraid. They changed you until you couldn’t remember what you looked like in the mirror anymore. So you guess and you guess and you pretend you know – you pretend they didn’t hurt you.’_ They dropped down onto their knees, bringing their legs to their chest. ‘ _You ran away so they couldn’t anymore.’_

Wesker reared back, like he’d been slapped, and his face twisted into a snarl.

Before he could do anything else, however, and before Waylon could throw himself forward to keep Alnilam safe, Chris’s voice stopped everything.

“Don’t,” he muttered, tugging at Wesker’s hand. “Captain, don’t.”

His eyes had trouble opening, so he missed the part where Wesker looked at him with something approaching fondness in his eyes. The old title must have made him remember something, Waylon thought. Something that still lived in his mind, whether he wanted to admit to it or not. Chris sat up slowly and with a lot of effort, grunting in pain for a moment.

“Hey Alnilam,” he greeted them, leaning back against the head of the bed. He looked exhausted, still.

Well, Waylon figured, he had just gone through something fairly intense.

Getting infected with something to save his life against a worse infection. That was never going to leave someone awake and refreshed in the end. Alnilam reached up to the edge of the bed and put their hands on the joint of his knee, sliding down to where the needle had slid home. “They’re a telepath,” Waylon explained to Wesker. “All four of them are. Apparently somewhat similar to another project Umbrella put together. Alnilam has a knack for pulling emotional states and memories out of peoples’ heads.”

Alnilam ignored him talking about them, continuing to inspect Chris’s leg.

“Welcome to the BSAA, by the way,” Waylon grinned, resting his elbows on his knees. “Umbrella is probably searching for you and you have no resources. Consider yourself stuck until you figure out how you’re leaving.”

If looks could kill, Waylon would have dropped to the floor, already dead before he hit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alnilam and Altair don't really like that Wesker is now part of things, but they do not want Chris to leave. They like Chris. 
> 
> Waylon is a little shit.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm back. Things have been happening in my life and I'll just be glad to still have readers for this series. 
> 
> So...Uh...Anyone expect Wesker to return in this story? I'm annoyed with how they did things surrounding him and I'm happy to be playing in this world. I'm an author, I can bring him back if I want to. That will be explained. Mostly.
> 
> Is it an explanation if the person explaining might just be straight-up lying?


End file.
